The following curious compliment to the fair sex is extracted from an old
play, entitled "Cupid's Whirligig:"--

"Who would abuse your sex that knows it? O Woman! were we not born of
you?--should we not then honour you? Nursed by you, and not regard you?
Made for you, and not seek you! And since we were made before you, should
we not live and admire you as the last and most perfect work of Nature?
_Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice_; but _Woman when she was
a skilful mistress of her art_. By your love we live in double breath,
even in our offspring after death. Are not all vices masculine, and
virtues feminine? Are not the muses the loves of the learned? Do not all
noble spirits follow the graces because they are women? There is but one
phoenix, and she is a female. Was not the princess and foundress of good
arts, Minerva, born of the brain of highest Jove, a woman? Has not woman
the face of love, the tongue of persuasion, and the body of delight? O
divine, perfectioned woman! If to be of thy sex is so excellent, what is
it then to be a woman enriched by nature, made excellent by education,
noble by birth, chaste by virtue, adorned by beauty!--a fair woman, which
is the ornament of heaven, the grace of earth, the joy of life, and the
delight of all sense, even the very _summum bonum_ of man's existence."

Burns must have had somewhat of the same idea as that which I have
underlined, when he wrote--

"Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses O!"

JAC-CO.

* * * * *